Mark's Site

This is my third "show-and-tell" article for homeschoolers about interesting and unusual educational resources. 

CSMP (Comprehensive School Mathematics Program) is an astoundingly detailed and complete K-6 mathematics curriculum which has been archived on the Internet and made freely available.  I have been using it with my own kids, starting with the Kindergarten materials, since they were 3 1/2 years old, and we are now well into the 4th grade part of the curriculum.

Its development was funded by the National Institute of Education back in the 60s and 70s, as part of the space-race-inspired push to develop a groundbreaking math curriculum.  An international team of mathematicians was assembled, and tasked with the challenge of rethinking the way mathematics was taught.  The result was this unique curriculum, published first by CEMREL and then by McREL, which used mathematics as a tool to develop a wide range of abstract and analytical thinking skills.  

Many educators have embraced and lauded this curriculum over the past few decades.  It was spotlighted in the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement's "Tried and True" publication for programs with "clear evaluation data which support program effectiveness".  While successful for many years, the program's uniqueness eventually became a marketing liability.  Few schools have the budget to train teachers in any approach that's outside of the mainstream, and the current emphasis on standardized testing scares parents and teachers away from anything different.  McREL decided to discontinue selling the curriculum.

But then, McREL did a truly noble thing.  Rather than letting CSMP become abandonware, McREL permitted the entire curriculum to be archived on the Internet.  Thousands of dollars of curriculum were made available for free: teacher guides, workbooks, storybooks, puzzlebooks... everything!

If you take the time to check out the material, the first thing you'll notice is the unbelievably detailed teaching manuals.  I have never seen any other teaching manual, ever, for any subject, as detailed as these.  An in-depth lesson is provided for every day of every grade level.  The lesson plans are based on the "spiral method" in which concepts are rotated and combined, gradually introducing a concept once and then revisiting it again weeks later, allowing each student to master the material in his own time in an unpressured way.  

I can honestly say that the CSMP teaching manuals are what gave me the confidence to embark on homeschooling my own kids.  Although in many areas I'm content to unschool, math was one thing I didn't want to leave to chance.  (That's just me, because math is one of my own personal passions.  I know that other homeschoolers are able to successfully unschool their kids in math, and I respect that).  I might not have had the courage to homeschool without this complete roadmap for teaching mathematics.

One important thing to keep in mind about the program is that it is really designed to be taught by an instructor.  Many homeschooling parents (especially those with large families) are looking for workbooks or interactive computer programs that their children can learn from without any parental instruction.  This is NOT such a curriculum.  A typical lesson plan will have the instructor introduce some concept, and then guide the child interactively through some sample challenges.  Then the child is given some related worksheets to work on independently.

Here's the way I use the curriculum:  First, because of the breadth and depth of the curriculum, I try to set aside some time at least four times a week to do math lessons with the kids.  Because my children are at different levels within the program, I unfortunately can't teach them simultaneously.  I must prepare two lessons (it usually only takes me 5 or 10 minutes to understand the lesson and assemble any materials that will be required).  While I work with one child on math, the other is usually working independently on a writing or reading assignment.  At the younger grade levels, a lesson rarely took us more than 15 minutes or so, but at the higher grade levels, a typical lesson might take as much as 30 minutes of "interactive" time, and maybe up to an additional 30 minutes of independent work.

But other homeschoolers use the program in a very different way.  Some use the program for a period of time as an antidote to typical math books, but eventually return to a mainstream curriculum once the parent/child friction over math (or anxiety about some particular topic) has been reduced.  Others cull the lesson plans for interesting projects that augment their traditional math curriculum.  Although much of the CSMP material is interrelated, there are some wonderful standalone lessons that don't require any other knowledge of the program, especially in geometry, probability, graph theory, and general puzzle solving.  For a list of my favorites, check out:
http://mengelberg.home.comcast.net/CSMP/CSMPLessons.html

CSMP uses a special visual language to teach certain types of mathematical abstractions.  Although everything is explained thoroughly in the teaching manuals, if you're browsing the materials for the first time, your first reaction is likely to be, "Huh? What the heck does that picture mean?"  So before diving in, I recommend checking out my brief overview of the most important new notations you'll encounter.  You can find my overview at:
http://mengelberg.home.comcast.net/CSMP/csmp.html

And of course, most importantly, you'll need the link for the curriculum, which you'll notice is located at Buffalo State College.  The existence of this archive is thanks to Tom Giambrone, who spent many, many hours scanning in the materials, and the people of Buffalo State for assisting him and funding his archival efforts:
http://ceure.buffalostate.edu/~csmp/